PREPARING     FO..I      OLD      AGE. 


SERMON 


PKEACHKD  AT    "  Ar>L-Soui.s ''    ('mi:   n,   NV.\v   \'ui:iv,  <>\ 
I--KO.M  Tin-:   FI;M-:K.\I.  AI    WAI.I'OI.I:,   X.H.,   or 

I 

MRS.  LOUISA  BELLOWS  KNAPP, 

WHO  DiKD  .MAIICII     (i,    1.S7-J,  AGED  86, 


Relict   of  Jacob   Newman   Knapp,  who   died  July   27,  1868, 
aged  ninety-  five  years. 


BV 
HENRY    W.    BELLOWS, 

Mil'lIKW   OF  TUB  DECKA-^KD. 


PRESS    OF    JOHN    \'.'ILSO\     AM)     SON. 

1872, 


PREPARING     FOR      OLD     AGE. 


SERMON 


PREACHED  AT   "  ALL-SOULS"  Cnuucn,  NEW  YORK,  ON  RETURNING 
KROM  THE  FUNERAL  AT  WALPOLE,  N.H.,  OP 


MRS.  LOUISA  BELLOWS  KNAPP, 


WHO  DIED  MARCH  16,  1872,  AGED  86, 


Eelict   of  Jacob   Newman   Knapp,  who   died  July   27,  1868, 
aged  ninety-Jive  years. 


BY 

HENEY    W.    BELLOWS, 

NEPHEW  OF  TUB  DECEASED. 


CAMBRIDGE : 

PRESS    OF   JOHN  WILSON   AND    SON. 
1872. 


LJBKAHY 
ISITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SAM'A  1URIS\!{\ 


PREPARING    FOR    OLD    AGE. 


"THEY  SHALL  STILL  BRING  FORTH  FRUIT  IN  OLD  AGE."  —  Ps.  xcii.  14. 

r  I  ^HIS  is  the  promise  which,  through  the  mouth 
of  the  Psalmist,  God  gives  those  that  live 
godly  and  obedient  lives.  *  The  righteous  shall 
flourish  like  the  palm-tree  :  he  shall  grow  like  a 
cedar  in  Lebanon.  Those  that  be  planted  in  the 
house  of  the  Lord  shall  flourish  in  the  courts  of 

* 

our  God.     They  shall  still  bring  forth  fruit  in  old 
age  :  they  shall  be  fat  and  flourishing." 

All  prudent  people  see  the  wisdom  of  preparing 
against  the  bodily  wants  of  their  declining  years. 
They  anticipate  the  time  when  their  physical  vigor, 
capacity  of  labor,  power  to  sustain  exposure  and 
hardship,  will  forsake  them  ;  when  they  will  require 
more  of  comfort,  rest,  and  retirement,  freedom 
from  anxieties,  and  a  cessation  from  struggle  and 
forethought  ;  and  they  are  willing  to  labor  hard, 
and  to  be  saving  and  self-denying,  that  they  may 


4  PREPARING   FOR   OLD    AGE. 

lay  up  the  means  of  competency  and  comfort  for 
themselves  and  those  growing  old  with  them. 
Even  the  animals  and  insects  possess  an  instinctive 
prudence,  and,  in  the  summer,  provide  against  the 
winter's  wants.  But  how  much  rarer  is  the  fore- 
thought that  anticipates  the  necessary  provision  to 
be  made  for  the  deeper  wants  of  old  age  ?  It  is 
infinitely  more  important  to  prepare  the  man  him- 
self for  growing  old  with  peace  and  cheerfulness 
than  to  prepare  the  external  circumstances  in  which 
his  age  is  to  be  passed.  Of  course  he  will  need 
shelter  and  food  and  external  supplies  and  comforts, 
and  he  is  wise  in  prudently  providing  against  such 
obvious  necessities.  But  how  much-  more  does  he 
need  to  keep  himself  in  all  possible  vigor  and 
repair,  that  he  may  not,  through  abuse  and  neglect, 
carry  a  needlessly  shattered  and  disordered  frame, 
a  perverted  and  poisoned  constitution  into  his 
declining  years  ?  The  ills  and  infirmities  of  age 
are  enough  of  themselves,  without  being  loaded 
with  the  pains  and  penalties  of  gluttony,  intemper- 
ance, excesses  of  the  passions,  neglect  of  the  laws 
of  health,  through  wilful  exposures,  broken  sleep, 
reckless  toil  in  pursuit  of  useless  wrealth,  torture 
of  the  nerves  through  straining  use,  and  exhaustion 
of  vital  powers.  There  is  no  reason  why  people 


PREPARING    FOR   OLD    AGE.  5 

of  average  constitutions  should  not,  by  due  moder- 
ation of  the  appetites,  proper  regard  to  the  claims 
of  sleep,  control  of  the  passions,  regularity  of  life, 
and  avoidance  of  needless  exposures  in  dress, 
preserve  their  bodies  to  a  late  age  in  fair  health 
and  powers  of  enjoyment.  Moses  was  a  hundred 
and  twenty  years  old  when  he  died  ;  yet  the  sacred 
historian  says,  "his  eye  was  not  dim,  nor  his 
natural  force  abated."  It  is  by  no  means  true,  that 
youth,  or  even  middle  age,  is  necessarily  the  period 
of  greatest  uniformity  of  health,  or,  in  all  respects, 
of  greatest  vigor.  The  period  of  greatest  physical 
beauty  and  redundancy  of  spirits  is  not  usually 
that  of  greatest  endurance  or  the  most  even  hap- 
piness. 

There  is  a  balance  and  co-ordination  of  the  organs 
and  physical  powers,  which  is  only  attained  by 
time.  The  human  system,  carefully  preserved, 
settles  into  equilibrium,  consolidates,  toughens, 
becomes  capable  of  prolonged  exertion,  loses  sus-, 
ceptibility  to  the  disturbing  influence  of  cold  and 
heat,  and  is  in  every  way  more  able  to  bear,  and 
really  to  enjoy,  labor  at  forty  than  at  twenty. 
Then  comes,  oftentimes,  a  well-earned  period  of 
even  health  ;  when  the  irritable  ganglions  of  the 

stomach,  most  sensitive  in  the  redundant  sensibility 

i* 


PREPARING    FOR   OLD    AGE. 


of  youth,  lose  their  exquisite  power  to  disturb  and 
annoy.  Even  the  decay  of  the  bodily  passions 
favors  the  tranquillity  and  vigor  of  the  nobler 
parts  of  the  frame.  Men  who  obey  the  laws  of 
nature,  and  are  moderate  and  self-controlled,  have 
stronger  as  well  as  calmer  brains  at  sixty  than  at 
forty  ;  are  more  capable  of  long-protracted  mental 
exertion;  and  have,  in  a  true  view,  more  life,  and 
more  happiness  in  life,  from  sixty  to  seventy,  and 
often  till  eighty,  than  at  any  other  period.  But 
this,  from  a  physical  point  of  view,  is  wholly 
dependent  on  early  and  steadily  maintained  order, 
moderation,  and  self-control.  What  can. the  man 
who  eats  to  repletion,  who  drinks  intemperately, 
who  uses  narcotics  without  stint,  who  is  careless 
about  sleep  and  reckless  in  exposure,  not  to  speak 
of  still  more  wasting  vices,  expect  his  old  age  to 
be,  if  he  is  unhappy  enough  to  be  left  —  a  wreck 
or  shadow  of  himself — to  drag  out  his  miserable 
days  ?  "What  thoughtful  young  man  will  risk  his 
health  and  comfort  for  the  latter  half  of  his  three- 
score and  ten  years,  to  indulge  the  destructive 
appetites  and  passions  of  his  early  manhood  ?  His 
bones  will  be  full  of  the  sins  of  his  youth.  His 
senses  will  prematurely  decline.  His  body  will 
become  the  prison  and  torture-chamber  of  his 


PREPARING   FOR  OLD    AGE. 


mind.  At  fifty,  he  will  be  an  old  man,  and  loathe 
his  life,  which  he  will  yet  dread  to  surrender, 
became  of  an  accusing  conscience,  and  a  just 
sense  of  a  coming  judgment. 

But  it  is   not  the   body  only  that   needs   to  be 
prepared  for  old  age. 

It  is  true,  the  control  and  due  moderating  of 
bodily  habits  is  one  of  the  greatest  means  of  moral 
and  intellectual  discipline.  If  a  man  wants  to  have 
control  of  his  bodily  appetites,  he  must  control  his 
mental  desires,  regulate  his  temper,  govern  his  im- 
agination, order  his  thoughts,  install  his  conscience 
in  its  sacred  shrine,  and  bring  his  will  into  daily 
exercise.  With  proper  exceptions,  there  is  hardly  a 
better  test  of  a  man's  mental  and  moral  state,  than 
his  bodily  condition.  Wholeness  and  holiness  have 
the  same  meaning :  health  and  salvation  are  ideas  of 
one  import.  Intemperance  is  as  much  a  mental  as  a 
bodily  disease;  licentiousness  has  its  worst  fountain 
in  a  prurient  and  polluted  imagination.  A  man  who 
reads  books,  or  seeks  to  see  pictures,  which  fill  the 
mind  with  impure  or  heated  thoughts,  is  already  a  lost 
man.  The  wise  and  aspiring  will  not  peruse,  even 
in  the  daily  papers,  what  is  designed  to  minister 
to  low  and  passionate  tastes.  I  have  often  said 
before,  and  I  repeat  it  again,  that  one  of  the  most 


8  PREPARING    FOR   OLD   AGE. 

important  and  valuable  of  the  forms  of  self-dis- 
cipline is  to  pass  resolutely  over  in  papers  and 
magazines  and  books,  all  anecdotes,  stories,  reports, 
which  fill  the  imagination  with  pictures  of  sin, 
crime,  and  sensuality.  A  history  of  thieves  and 
robbers,  the  Newgate  Calendar,  the  Police  Gazette 
(and  which  of  our  daily  or  weekly  papers  is  not,  in 
parts  of  it,  too  well  deserving  of  that  title),  makes 
ten  rogues  and  libertines  for  one  it  warns.  A  man 
is  to  be  known,  and  a  woman  too,  by  the  books 
and  magazines  they  read.  A  trashy  set  of  maudlin 
novels,  or  profligacy  veiled  in  sentiment,  or  sensu- 
ality thinly  covered  by  poetic  diction,  is  the  source* 
of  nine-tenths  of  the  faithless  virtue,  the  wrecked 
modesty,  the  domestic  misery  of  society.  A  cer- 
tain school  of  French  novels,  which  women  of 
fortune  often  spend  half  their  lives  in  reading,  saps 
them  of  all  moral  dignity  or  inward  purity,  and 
leaves  them,  if  in  possession  of  their  honor,  without 
real  chastity  of  mind,  or  the  power  of  domestic 
happiness.  What  but  a  miserable,  cynical,  sour,  old 
age  can  be  in  store  for  those  who  have  filled  the 
chambers  of  imagery,  in  their  minds,  with  recol- 
lections that  shame  and  poison  their  thoughts? 

But  the  way  to  escape  evil  is  to  be  preoccupied 
with  what  is  good.     The  principal  armor   against 


PREPARING   FOR  OLD   AGE.  9 

bad  thoughts,  low  tastes,  idle  fancies,  a  life  that  is 
wrecked  on  appetite  and  passion,  caprice  and  self- 
indulgence,  is  early  and  with  persistency,  up  to 
middle  life,  to  be  occupied  with  pursuits  and  tastes 
and  duties  that  involve  regularity,  self-control, 
earnestness,  thoughtful  ness,  and  sober  and  honest 
feelings.  And  divine  Providence  has  given,  as  the 
usual  lot,  a  necessary  sphere  of  duty  and  employ- 
ment, which,  if  well-filled,  is  the  best  safeguard  for 
honor,  purity,  moderation,  and  health.  If  people 
have  an  honest  and  constant  occupation,  which 
they  fill  reputably  for  the  twenty-five  most  active 
years  of  their  life,  they  are  at  the  best  school,  which 
God  opens,  for  health,  peace  of  mind,  and  prepa- 
ration for  old  age.  The  chief  exposures  to  danger 
are  for  those  from  whom  the  very  virtues  of  their 
parents  take  away  the  necessities  of  self-provision. 
It  is  a  serious  misfortune  for  a  young  man  not  to 
be  called  to  bear  the  yoke  in  his  youth.  Rapid  and 
artificial  promotion  is  another  misfortune.  A  young 
man  should  not,  without  due  apprenticeship,  be 
lifted  to  a  post  of  responsibility  in  a  mercantile  es- 
tablishment, simply  because  his  capital  enables  him 
to  command  the  place.  Half  of  our  commercial 
disasters  are  due  to  the  fact  that  men  who  did  not 

come  up  through  all  the  stages  of  preparation  to 

it 


10  PREPARING   FOR  OLD   AGE. 

the  control  of  great  affairs  have  their  hands  on  the 
helm.  Young  women  whom  the  wealth  of  parents 
can  protect  from  household  cares  have  a  fearful 
exposure  to  unhappiness,  because  not  ballasted  with 
duties  just  when  their  sails  are  fullest  of  wind. 
What  can  a  girl  of  passion  and  power  and  educa- 
tion do  with  her  nature  to  keep  it  from  all  kinds  of 
vain  desires  and  caprices,  and  lurches  into  senti- 
mental excesses,  who  has  no  duties ;  nothing  neces- 
sarily to  demand  her  thoughts  except  her  toilet, 
and  her  lovers?  There  is  no  country  in  the  world 
where  so  many  girls  are  brought  up  in  idleness,  as 
in  ours.  They  begin  their  womanhood,  assert  their 
liberty,  have  the  whole  control  of  their  time,  earlier 
here  than  in  any  civilized  community;  and,  as  a 
consequence,  they  make  the  least  prepared  wives 
and  mothers;  they  fill  our  western  courts  with  bills 
of  divorce;  they  furnish  us  with  the  scandals  of 
the  hour.  If  nothing  else  can  arrest  the  attention 
of  rich  parents  to  the  duty  of  giving  household 
cares,  a  domestic  education,  a  moderation  in  dress 
and  pleasures,  a  habit  of  occupation  in  serious 
reading  and  unpalatable  pursuits  to  their  daughters, 
let  them  reflect  upon  the  future  they  are  preparing 
for  them.  What  is  to  be  the  domestic  happiness, 
what  the  old  age  of  children  brought  up  with  such 


PREPARING    FOR   OLD   AGE.  11 

premature  freedom,  or  such  capricious  tastes,  with 
such  idle  reading,  with  so  little  discipline  ami  drill 
of  mind  and  heart!  The  education  of  life  is  not 
confined  to  the  mere  season  of  school-days.  And 
even  that  short  period  which  we  call  emphatically 
the  season  of  education  is  better  tested  by  the 
mental  habits  and  moral  training  it  has  established, 
than  by  the  amount  of  knowledge  or  accomplish- 
ments it  has  communicated.  To  secure  the  power 
of  attention  and  fix  the  habit  of  application  is 
worth  tenfold  over  all  else  that  can  be  learned  in 
school.  To  teach  how  to  study,  how  to  think,  how 
to  govern  a  wandering  attention,  how  to  overcome 
the  reluctance  of  the  mind  or  the  vacillation  of  the 
will,  how  to  abstract  the  thoughts,  —  in  short  how 
to  use  the  mental  tools  and  the  moral  forces,  —  this 
is  what  the  best  educators  labor  at.  And  it  is  what 
the  wisest  parents  seek  to  nourish  and  secure  by 
home-training  and  the  trades  and  callings  to  which 
their  sons  and  daughters  are  bred.  What  do  you 
suppose  is  meant  by  compelling  the  princes  of  the 
German  Empire  to  learn  a  trade,  in  addition  to  the 
regular  curriculum  of  academic  education?  One 
becomes  a  glazier,  another  a  plumber,  another  a 
carpenter.  It  is  doubtless  to  compel  precision,  posi- 
tive knowledge,  executive  skill,  and  the  necessity 


12  PREPARING   FOR  OLD   AGE. 

of  testing  by  results  the  theories  of  elementary 
instruction,  a  sympathy  with  ordinary  life  and 
common  people.  An  education  at  school  or  in  the 
home,  in  which  no  stern  and  positive  control  has 
been  established,  no  routine  steadily  submitted  to, 
no  hardship  borne,  no  accountableness  exacted,  no 
suppression  of  caprices  required,  can  end  only  in 
inefficiency,  self-indulgence,  selfishness,  crime,  and 
final  unhappiness.  If  at  twenty,  young  people,  in 
any  station  of  life  or  of  either  sex,  have  no  regular 
duties,  no  fixed  employments,  no  habits  of  sober 
reading,  no  mental  self-control,  no  willingness  to 
do  what  is  not  immediately  pleasant  or  agreeable, 
no  life  but  one  of  lounging,  parading,  visiting, 
conning  magazines  and  novels,  or  indulging  senti- 
mental fancies,  —  they  are  in  peril  of  making  ship- 
wreck of  their  bodies  and  souls  in  the  next  twenty 
years,  in  which  comes  the  season  of  full  liberty, 
when  their  position  is  to  be  taken,  their  livelihood 
made,  their  character  exhibited,  their  domestic 
virtues  tested,  their  conflict  at  close  quarters  with 
other  people  endured,  their  paternal  or  maternal 
powers  and  graces  tried,  and  all  that  is  in  them 
subjected  to  strain  and  stress.  On  the  use  and 
development  of  these  twenty  years  between  young 
manhood  and  maidenhood  and  middle  life,  depends 


PREPARING   FOR  OLD   AGE.  13 

the  dignity,  the  usefulness,  and  the  happiness  of 
old  age.  This  middle  life  brings  forth  the  natural 
fruits  of  the  discipline  and  drill  of  boyhood  and 
girlhood.  A  few  overcome  the  defects  or  follies  of 
their  unhappy  bringing  up.  But  the  boy  is  father 
of  the  man,  in  most  cases  the  girl  mother  of  the 
woman;  and,  according  to  the  wisdom  of  domestic 
and  school  training  and  drill,  the  character,  tastes, 
habits,  then  formed,  will  be,  in  ordinary  cases,  the 
life  and  career  of  the  children  as  men  and  women. 

And  then,  how  certain  is  an  industrious,  prudent, 
high-toned,  virtuous,  and  religious  middle  life  to 
prepare  a  dignified,  happy,  and  serene  old  age? 
Who  are  the  long-lived;  who  preserve  longest  the 
feelings  and  even  appearance  of  youth;  who  are 
the  wise  and  honorable,  the  revered  and  beloved  in 
their  declining  days,  —  except  those  whose  middle 
life  has  been  governed  by  self-respect,  ordered  by 
self-control,  improved  in  all  opportunities  of  wis- 
dom, blessed  with  the  well-earned  confidence  of 
their  peers,  and  dignified  with  the  trusts  and 
responsibilities  that  naturally  fall  to  competent 
character  and  well-balanced  minds  ? 

I  had  occasion  this  very  week  to  attend,  two 
hundred  miles  north  in  the  country,  the  funeral 
of  an  aged  relative,  who,  at  eighty-six,  in  a 


14  PREPARING   FOR  OLD   AGE. 

fresh  and  honorable  old  age,  was  gathered  to  her 
fathers.  Perhaps  I  may  be  excused  for  asking 
even  the  sympathy  of  my  flock  with  the  mingled 
pride  and  sorrow  I  have  in  contemplating  the 
illustration  she  offered  of  the  principles  of  this 
discourse.  The  youngest  sister  of  my  own  father, 
she  passed  her  girlhood  in  his  house,  and  on  the 
death  of  our  mother  in  my  infancy,  became,  for  a 
time,  the  virtual  mother  of  my  brothers  and  sister. 
She  had  closed  the  eyes  of  my  paternal  grand- 
parents, and  then  those  of  my  own  father  and 
mother;  borne  me,  an  infant,  in  her  arms.  I  had 
been  at  school  to  her  husband,  a  most  gifted  and 
excellent  man,  and  for  my  whole  life  enjoyed  a 
frequent  and  most  familiar  intercourse  with  this 
venerable  and  beautiful  couple;  he,  closing  his 
spotless  life  in  nearly  full  possession  of  his  mental 
powers,  three  years  ago,  at  ninety-five;  and  she, 
surviving  until  last  week,  to  eighty-six,  in  full 
possession  of  an  equally  remarkable  understanding. 
In  the  summer  vacation,  my  house  was  within  a 
few  rods  of  theirs,  and  it  was  love  and  reverence 
for  them  that  drew  me  to  the  spot,  and  made  it  such 
a  refreshment  and  delight  to  go  there  season  after 
season.  Beginning  life  with  the  imperfect  school- 
ing of  country-girls,  eighty  years  since,  but  with  the 


PREPARING   FOR   OLD    AGE.  15 

admirable  training  of  wholesome  necessities,  and 
the  example  of  virtuous  and  prudent  parents,  this 
excellent  woman  had  spent  her  married  life  of  fifty 
years  in  the  society  of  an  educated,  aspiring,  and 
saintly  man;  and  in  that  long  period  of  unbroken 
happiness  —  into  which  had  entered  toil,  the  rear- 
ing of  children,  the  necessities  of  daily  economy, 
and  the  most  rigid  virtues  of  the  housekeeper  — 
she  had  so  unfolded  her  sympathetic  and  affec- 
tionate nature,  as  to  become  the  friend,  adviser,  and 
consoler  of  a  wide  circle  of  relatives,  and  then  of 
all  the  people  in  the  village.  No  ear  so  open,  no 
heart  so  tender,  no  tongue  so  swift  and  kind;  no- 
body so  patient  to  listen,  so  wise  to  counsel,  and 
so  persistent  in  following  up  her  advice  with  the 
interest  and  watchfulness  of  years.  She  never 
gave  up  anybody  who  had  the  family  blood  or 
name,  whatever  discouragements  or  faults  in  them 
were  visible  to  others.  To  emphasize  all  that  Was 
good  and  hopeful,  and  overlook  all  that  was  other- 
wise, was  her  habit;  although  none  was  keener 
to  discern  the  faults  she  would  not  openly  recog- 
nize. Her  devotion  to  her  husband  was  complete. 
She  appeared  to  think  him  perfect. (which,  indeed, 
he  almost  seemed  to  others),  and  the  nearest  thing 
on  earth  to  her  Saviour;  and  he  repaid  her  homage 


16  PREPARING   FOR   OLD   AGE. 

by  a  love  and  gallantry,  a  trust  and  reverence, 
which  is  usually  seen  only  among  those  not  in  daily 
and  long  contact  with  each  other.  What  is  written 
in  books  of  poetry  might  have  been  daily  witnessed 
in  their  lives.  They  delighted,  above  every  thing, 
in  each  other's  society,  which  was  not  the  mere 
intercourse  of  habit,  or  the  sympathy  which  oxen 
that  work  together  have  in  a  common  yoke;  but 
it  was  the  daily  and  hourly  interchange  of  thought, 
the  obvious  and  intentional  ministration  to  each 
other's  mental  and  moral  improvement  and  pleas- 
ure. They  read  the  same  books  together;  they 
studied  the  Scriptures;  they  discussed  the  prin- 
ciples and  ideas  of  the  day;  and  knew  all  that  was 
going  on  in  the  great  world  of  affairs,  though 
seldom  leaving  their  country  home.  Until  over 
ninety,  he  wrorked  in  his  garden  for  a  couple  of 
hours  daily;  and  then,  clothed  in  spotless  gar- 
ments, sat  down  to  his  books,  —  the  classics,  and 
the  elegant  and  solid  literature  of  the  past.  She 
busied  herself  about  her  house,  tended  her  flowers, 
or  even  busied  herself,  up  to  eighty,  in  her  kitchen, 
for  a  few  hours;  and  then,  in  the  neatest  and  pre- 
cisest  garb,  sat  next  her  husband,  to  share  his  book 
or  to  converse  for  hours  upon  the  questions  of 
patriotism,  science,  philosophy,  poetry,  and  religion, 


PREPARING   FOR  OLD   AGE.  17 

on  which  he  gave  his  own  views,  and  received  hers 
with  equal  respect.  He  was  a  poet,  sage,  and 
saint  by  original  endowment,  and  by  culture  as  a 
student  in  theology,  and  as  a  teacher  who  had 
had  the  first  men  in  Boston  and  Salem  under  his 
charge,  —  the  Prescotts  and  Peabodys  and  Grays 
and  Amorys.  His  spiritual  mind,  profoundly 
interested  in  the  present  and  in  the  actual,  was 
equally  at  home  in  speculation  and  in  aspiration. 
The  future  of  society  on  earth,  —  for  which  he  had 
the  boldest  and  noblest  hopes,  —  and  the  future 
of  the  soul  in  heaven,  were  his  favorite  themes; 
and  on  both  he  talked  with  such  beauty  and  wis- 
dom that  his  conversation,  up  to  ninety,  was  the 
pride  of  the  town,  and  the  attraction  of  men  of 
taste  and  culture  from  far  about.  She  almost  or 
quite  equalled  him  in  the  gift  of  graceful  expres- 
sion, and  was  fascinating  and  charming  in  the 
acuteness,  fluency,  and  fervor  of  her  spirit.  To- 
gether they  made  a  couple,  such  as  I  have  never 
seen  in  life,  in  respect  of  the  high  level  of  their 
intercourse,  the  equality  of  their  powers,  and  their 
complete  and  increasing  happiness  in  each  other. 
But  in  one  respect,  she  was  the  more  instructive 
example,  because  she  was  not  only  equally  strong 
in  womanly  affections  and  ready  sympathies,  and 


18  PREPARING  FOR  OLD   AGE. 

• 

in  intellectual  apprehensiveness  and  wide  interest 
in  impersonal  affairs,  —  a  singular  and  beautiful 
antithesis,  —  but  unlike  him,  who  began  with  a 
cultivated  mind,  she  acquired  a  highly  cultivated 
mind  after  thirty,  and  continued  obviously  to  widen 
and  strengthen,  to  acquire  fresh  views  and  larger 
comprehension,  to  the  very  close  of  her  life.  She 
was  one  of  the  few  women  with  whom  it  was  not 
necessary  to  choose  one's  topics,  or  to  avoid  themes 
of  subtle  or  philosophical  quality.  It  was  as  de- 
lightful to  talk  either  theology  or  philosophy  with 
her,  as  with  a  scholar  by  profession.  The  last 
book  read  to  her,  at  eighty-six,  a  few  weeks  before 
her  death,  was  a  volume  of  Herbert  Spencer's 
philosophy.  Thus  she  had  been  growing  all  her 
life,  disproving  wholly  the  necessity  for  ever  losing 
the  youth  of  the  mind  or  the  heart,  and  presenting 
a  perfect  argument  for  immortality.  She  was 
pious  without  cant  or  blindness,  or  a  mere  imitative 
sympathy;  and  showed  how  calm,  reasonable,  and 
practical  faith  may  become  to  a  nature  that  is 
habitually  thoughtful,  and  straining  ever  upwards. 
But  I  will  not  place  her,  by  the  partiality  of  my 
affections,  in  a  light  that  may  discourage  imitation. 
I  wish  her  example  to  shine  in  upon  you,  not  only 
to  dignify  and  sweeten  your  ideas  of  the  possibil- 


PREPARING   FOR   OLD   AGE.  19 

ities  of  domestic  union  and  blessedness,  but  also  to 

bear  witness  to  the  possibilities  of  making  old  age 

i 
green   and   growing.      She   fulfilled   perfectly  the 

promise  of  the  Psalmist,  "  They  shall  bring  forth 
fruit  in  old  age."  How  large  and  full  and  sweet 
the  harvest  was,  I  cannot  make  you  know  and 
feel;  but  if  you  could  read  the  gratitude  and  affec- 
tion and  pride  that  swell  my  heart  and  a  hundred 
other  hearts,  to  whom  her  name  is  a  bond  and  a 
spell,  you  would  appreciate  the  force  of  all  the 
arguments  I  have  used  in  this  discourse  on  the 
duty  and  possibility  of  preparing  in  youth  and 
middle  life  for  a  serene,  vigorous,  happy,  and 
triumphant  old  age. 


THE  LIBRARY 
UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

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